Five Times
by lowriseflare
Summary: Five Times Neela Decided Not To Move to Baton Rouge And One Time She Changed Her Mind


1.

He calls as Simon is slamming out the door, and Neela has never been happier to pick up the phone in her life. "Ray? Yeah, hi."

"Hey," he says. "What's wrong?"

"What?" she asks, feeling her eyebrows knit together. "Why?"

"I don't know." There's a shrug in his voice. "You sound funny."

"No. Well, yes." She sits down on the sofa. It was a phenomenally bad day, really, and before she knows it she's telling him everything, about Dubenko and Carter, the guy wiggling his toes. About Simon, a little. There's half a bottle of pinot noir left over from the other night, and she pours herself a glass as she talks. And talks. She remembers this about him, the compulsion to tell him things, and if she's being neurotic, if she's _burdening_ him, well, he doesn't seem to care. He just listens, like he used to back before everything happened. It's nice.

"First of all, Dubenko's crying into his dirty martini over losing you," he tells her, when she's done. He sounds incredibly calm, the zenned-out kid in the back of the classroom. Neela has never been that kid. "You know that."

"His dirty martini?"

"I don't know. Dubenko strikes me as the kind of guy who orders annoying drinks at bars."

Neela laughs; she can feel something ease in her chest. Her back aches. Ray chats to her for awhile, little anecdotes she knows are meant to cheer her up: a guy he's working with at the gym who's training to run marathons again, his mother going on a blind date with an honest-to-God used-car salesman. The girl he's seeing who's gotten him hooked on _The Real Housewives of Orange County_.

That last one stings a little, which is ridiculous. "Can I ask you a question?" she says, wedging the phone between her ear and her shoulder. It could be the wine or the general crappiness of her day, but she feels a bit brave with him in a way she hasn't since they were roommates. "And I mean, forgive me. But why do you always go for these airheaded women?"

"Not always." He chuffs a little laugh into the phone. "I went for you, once upon a time."

Yes. Neela takes another sip of her wine. "Once upon a time," she echoes.

"What about you?" he asks. "Why do you always go for these douches?"

_Not always. _"Hey there. Simon's not a...a douche." Hearing her say the word cracks him up, and Neela smiles, she can't help it. She missed hearing him laugh. "It's a sickness, I guess."

"Yeah, we should throw you a fundraiser."

When Neela was at Yale she discovered a shop in New Haven that carried real Cadbury chocolate--proper English Cadbury, not the vile detestable Easter eggs--and you'd have thought she was Salk himself, she was so excited. All through school she took the bus there once a week and bought truly grotesque quantities of the stuff, always fearing as she walked in the door that the proprietor had somehow changed his order in the last seven days and wouldn't be stocking it any longer. Actually all that happened was she gained she eight pounds and wound up shipping a giant box of Dairy Milk with her things when she moved to Chicago, but the point is that she and Ray have only been talking on the phone again since Halloween and it feels sort of like that, like she'd better get her fill in case something happens and he drops out of her life again.

"Be good," she tells him, before they hang up.

"I always am."

It was seventy-four degrees in Louisiana today. Neela checked, on a whim, before she went to work. There's a position open at Le Chatlier, and she was just thinking--well. She was just thinking.

She's embarrassed now, though no one will ever know. He has a life down there. He doesn't need her barging in.

Besides, what would she do with all her winter clothes?

Once upon a time, she thinks, and dials Simon's number. She should try to smooth things over with him.

2.

She emails the HR department a couple of nights later, as things with Simon deteriorate and she finds she's not particularly interested in trying to repair them. She feels vaguely sick as she types her cover letter, like she's committing a kind of treason.

Or like something is shifting in her core.

The thing is, she likes Simon. She likes him very much. He's incredibly tidy. He compliments her constantly--at least, he did before everything started to go to pot--and who doesn't like to hear that? You'd have to be an idiot. And all right, he's incredibly closed-off, but it honestly didn't bother her too much in the beginning. She's British, after all. She doesn't need her boyfriends spilling their guts all over the place every second. It doesn't all have to be emergency surgery, passion and despair and people throwing themselves in front of--

oh, God. She just means--

forget it.

She hits send.

3.

They interview her by phone, which is a mercy. If she had to go down there she'd have to tell people, and if she had to tell people she'd have to explain what exactly she thinks she's doing.

What exactly _does_ she think she's doing?

When the call for the heart comes she gets on an airplane, flies clear across the country to fetch what's been lost.

4. She gets the position.

The message is waiting when she lands in Chicago.

They want to hire her in Baton Rouge.

Damn. Damn damn damn.

She doesn't tell a soul.

She's not going to go.

If she went, that would be saying, _I am wholly ready for this. I am wholly ready for you. _

She should tell him, at least.

About the job.

Not the other part.

Maybe she shouldn't tell him anything.

Because she's definitely not going to go, and telling him about it and then not going would just be one more horrible thing she did to him on the long list of horrible things she's done to him.

Or perhaps he wouldn't even care.

That would be unbearably humiliating.

She thinks he's still dating that girl, the Wealthy Housewives girl.

He does like stupid women, doesn't he?

Well.

Not always.

5.

She calls to tell him about Seattle, but mostly just to say hello. It's been a few days. Things are strange here.

"How was the trip?" he asks.

"Mad." She gives him the headlines as she turns the light off, curls up in her bed. She's been doing this lately, when they talk, and she hasn't probed too deeply into what it might mean. "I broke up with Simon," she says into the dark.

There is a pause. "Oh," he says, at length.

Neela sits up a bit. "What 'oh'?"

"Just a general oh. I'm sorry."

"It's actually fine," she says, and realizes that it is. "It wasn't the right thing."

"Yeah."

Another silence. They are circling something, here. She thinks of how he looked at Halloween, the way her head fit on his shoulder, the muscles in his chest. Finally she hears him exhale. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Mm?" It comes out very quickly.

"Are you still interviewing for attending gigs?"

That is not what she thought he was going to ask--what is the _matter_ with her?--and there's that flush of embarrassment again. She doesn't know how she somehow got it into her head that he still thought about her that way. He's gotten over it, clearly. She should try to do the same. "Not really," she says, and she hopes it sounds nonchalant. "I think it's doing to be Duke." Actually, she has no idea where she's going to go--her career hasn't been this up in the air since she was slinging Icees at the JumboMart--but Duke sounds fine. Duke sounds impressive.

"Oh," Ray says again. "Okay. Well, that's cool. That's, you know. Duke. Good for you, Neela."

Yes, good for her. "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious. I need to know where I'm going to be sending all my emo mix CDs." He laughs a little, then stops. "Fuck. Neela. The reason I'm asking is because there's a job open here in surgery, and I mean. It's not Duke. It's not even close to Duke. But it is, you know." He takes a breath. "Close to me. So."

So.

"Ray," she starts. Alone in her apartment in Chicago, she slips a hand beneath her shirt to feel the hammer of her heart against her palm.

"Look, don't even say it. I know it's stupid. But I just wanted to put it out there, so you could at least think about--"

"I've been thinking about it for weeks."

He stops. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Yeah, I heard you." She can hear him swallow. "What'd you think?"

Her chest continues to ache with the force of her heartbeat and she thinks, not for the first time, what a doggedly insistent organ it is. "Well." She stalls. "I'm concerned about the food."

"Neela." His voice is so low is almost vibrates. "Come on."

_I am ready for this. I am ready for you._

"I think I'm terrified," she says finally.

"Yeah." He sighs. "Me too."

Two days later she gets a map of Baton Rouge in the mail. All the take-out places are circled in Sharpie.

_The food's not bad,_ he's scrawled across the bottom.

She opens it up and starts to cry.

The woman from Le Chatlier asked her, among other things, why she wanted to come to Louisiana.

"I have family there," she replied.

6. She calls to thank him, but gets his voicemail instead.

It's possible he's given up on her. It's possible she's about to make the biggest mistake of her adult life.

Anything is possible.

Neela waits for the beep.

"I just wanted to tell you I got your mail," she says, crossing one arm across her chest and staring off the roof of County at the skyline, at whatever sits beyond. "And also that you should keep an eye out. One of these days--" She stops for a moment, takes a deep breath. "One of these days, Ray, I'm going to be sending you something back."


End file.
